The packing commences

Not that I'm brining everything in this picture with me, but it gives you an idea of the herculean task at hand: pack for my trip and clean this room in a week and half!
I did some shopping today and am pretty impressed with myself. I think I have a drug, bandage or paste to aide, heal or primp anything that comes my way in the next 7 months.

The Pig of Wiggly

Greetings from eastern Wisconsin, where a highly abnormal statistic of 3 in 10 people in public areas are wearing either Badgers or Packers clothing or accessories. This statistic increases slightly to 4 in 10 people wearing Badgers or Packers clothing or accessories in private residences.

Although we need to gather more data, early research results indicate 10 in 10 people have a week's worth of Badgers or Packers clothing in their wardrobe, thus supporting the term "Packer Nation."

In my other area of research, regional vernacular, I have come to discover that stop lights are referred to as "stop and go lights," which is indeed accurate, but quite unnecessary. Not for lack of stop and go lights. Rather, because they already have Piggly Wiggly grocery stores here, there's really no more need to go out of the way to make visiting Minnesotans feel like they're outnumbered by snowmobiles 11 to 1 in the tri-county area.

Oh, The Sketch Book

I was day dreaming for a few minutes in church this morning and started paging through the sketch book I've been writing notes in since the middle of college. I came across this poem or song (which, I do not know--probably a song). Records indicate that it was composed sometime between 1.11.01 and 1.21.01, during college at Iowa State. Enjoy.

Kool-aide

Koool-aide
You make me unthirsty and
make my lips red
when
I am so
thirsty
you satisfy me
I like
all your
flavors
especially
that blue colored one.

Kool-aide.

Another Fall Season

Ah, another great season of fall Ultimate has come and gone.

First of all I can't tell you how much I love to play Ultimate, but secondly I can tell you how impressed I am with our level of play this year.

We started out seeded pretty high in the C bracket, but come playoff time, we were re-seeded into the B bracket and ended up taking 7th (out of 8th) place. Sounds lame, but we lost to the first seed in the B bracket playoffs by only 1 point in sudden death--which rocked. Take that first seeds!

No indoor Ultimate for me this winter, but I'm super excited to get in as much summer Ultimate as I can in 2008!

13.1 miles

Shazam!

This Sunday I ran in the beautiful Des Moines half-marathon and I couldn't have asked for more fun. I take that back, if there were kittens racing with me it would have been perfect. Regardless, I had a great time with beautiful weather, great co-racers, friendly volunteers and sweet friends in Iowa.

I roughly guessed I'd finish in 2:30 (keep in mind that my training for this race was running 8 miles two weeks before race day) and went over by only 7 minutes. Frankly, I know I would have met my goal, but...I chatted with too many people, wasting too much energy talking and walking to enjoy the conversations instead of jogging to keep on pace. I have no regrets for these choices that I've made. Learning about Patriot's Day from Boston Man is worth the extra 7 minutes alone. I am eternally grateful for his knowledge about General George Washington and his ability to keep the British at bay.

I used the half-marathon as an excuse to visit my Iowa-dwelling friends again, and really Iowa too. That made it worth the race: seeing my friends, driving around in an old Plymouth, talking about cows, drinking coffee, and having great conversations. And, even though Rebbeca, my friends' 2.5-month old, wasn't much for conversing, she still left me smiling.

At any rate, drop me a line if you want to join me on the race course in your running shoes...good times for sure.

Little Oak Tree

I've been meaning to snap a picture of Little Oak Tree for months now and finally had my camera in my car to take this picture of Little Oak Tree, my favorite tree around.

I first noticed Little Oak Tree last fall when all the other trees had lost their leaves and this one was still fully leaved a beautiful red-brown. One of my favorite things to do outside is looking at trees with a stormy or cloudy sky behind them; take my word that Little Oak Tree is just beautiful in this gloomy weather we're having. I just named Little Oak Tree on a walk with Baxter dog tonight. It was the first time I've walked up to it; I said "hi," Baxter left his mark, and I realized Little Oak Tree is really two trees acting as one, which makes it all the more beautiful.

God Chooses Unlikely People for His Purposes

Ah, another year of Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) has started and as usual, I'm amazed at how useful, powerful and in-depth it is.

We're studying Matthew this year, which means I get to revisit a lot of stories and verses that I've read growing up and look at them through a completely different lens than the felt board* from Sunday school.

This is why I like BSF:

We studied the first 17 verses--16 verses of listing out Christ's lineage to Abraham and David--and picked out 5 women (prostitutes, foreigners, schemers, etc) that were in the lineage and discussed why we thought Matthew included them. In the lecture, it was pointed out that God included them to show that he came from simple and broken ancestors and highlight the grace of God. Since he had sinners for ancestors, he'll have sinners as his descendants (that's us!), the whole point of Jesus' coming, to erase the sin from his family, his spiritual family.

God doesn't just see us for who we are, but for who we can become; he takes our failures and uses them for his glory. God chooses unlikely people for his purposes.


*felt board: an old, 2-dimensional educational device to visually depict various bible stories to help children understand a little better with a piece of felt as a background and various people and props cut out of smaller pieces of felt.

In rare cases, felt boards were left alone after story time. from 1984-1990, 95% of Sunday school classroom teachers reported children playing with the felt board and cringing as children depicted their lack of understanding of gravity as clouds were placed on the ground, sheep floated in the sky, shepherds gravitated just above ground and rocks were placed precariously on both people and animal heads.